While Dan Harmon & Co. did most of the heavy lifting to get the series back on track in the Season 5 premiere, it's clear there was one last issue the show had to deal with before finally getting on its way to being "Community" again: Pierce.

The departure of Chevy Chase's character at the end of last season, was brief and came with little fanfare. It's no surprise, Chase worked his way out of the show and was hardly on screen toward the tail end of that season. So, to deal with the character's good-bye now makes sense (even posthumously).

Pierce's death, which was revealed at the end of last week's "Ass crack bandit" episode, is the catalyst for this week's plot. The gang has just returned from Piece's really weird Laser Lotus Buddhist funeral and must now deal with the fallout of losing their "friend."

As pointed out by Chang (Ken Jeong, who the writers are really just throwing out there at random, it seems), the study group complained about Pierce non-stop. Looking back at the character's actions, Pierce is very hatable. Watching the show, I remember myself personally loathing him right around Season 2's Dungeons & Dragons episode. Since then, Pierce has been slowly coming back to the character in Season 1 that was actually likable. This is the character that gave us the "Good Luck -- Don't need it. Never had it" scene along with this quote.

So, entering the final chapter of Pierce, we get everything the character has ever brought to the table: chaos, in-fighting, real sentiment and sperm.

Pierce's decision to hire a lawyer before his death to investigate whether anyone from the study group murdered him leads to a lot of skeletons in the closet being exposed. Ultimately, the lawyer's questions leads the study group to "empty out tanks of lies once and for all." However, we've seen this try to do this before in the flashback episode and the Muppet episode. They'll fight it out and have an epiphany. But we know they'll be fighting again.

That being said, the fighting here leads to three big developments:

1. The reminder that these are all broken people.

It gets lost in all the Greendale shenanigans, but there's a reason all these people are at community college. Their lives aren't great and they need each other to avoid falling apart. Of course, this results in them doing terrible things to each other and fighting about it. However, they have each other (a community) and a chance to get something more out of life.

2. The realization that, beneath it all, Pierce truly cared and loved the other members of the study group. It was lost so often after all the dealings in the past couple seasons. The off-camera drama didn't help either.

3. Troy's future: sailing around the world by himself in Pierce's boat to earn his fortune.

With Donald Glover slated to appear in only one more episode this season (and possibly ever), we finally get to see how the writers are dealing with his departure. They're sending him out to sea.

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Getting into each individual development from this episode, be it a reveal secret or final message from Pierce, would take some time. The point is that it was great to watch. At times, it was even cathartic to see some of the pent up issues with these characters finally revealed. Although, we're likely going to have to wait until next week to see how Abed (Danny Pudi) deals with Troy's departure.

All the while, there were still plenty of funny likes in this episode, though they were a bit front-loaded to deal with the drama bombs dropped later on. Overall, though, that was a great episode of TV.

Highlights

• “Troy and Abed are in Mourning”

• I though having the polygraph technician call out people's lies would get old. It didn't. “He did mean to say Butts Carlton”

• "They're all lying." "“We all know that you judgmental bitch!”

• "Can’t you just by women’s underwear?" "They have to be won in battle."

• “I didn’t just masturbate in the study room. I masturbated everywhere!”

• Of the final questions, I loved the ones Pierce asked of Britta and Annie the most. The first (Britta) was surprising and heartfelt. The second (Annie) was the most emotional. It's good to see that, in the end, she knew that was was Pierce's favorite and got the tiara.

• Everybody got sperm.

• In related news: “I didn’t just masturbate in the study room. I masturbated everywhere!”

• That bottle of scotch the Pierce bequeaths to Jeff says "Glencallan," which is not an actual brand of scotch. But if it was, it's apparently been aged for 40 years and is probably, really good -- smooth with very little burn.

"Glencallan" has apparently shown up in some other TV shows. If it sounds familiar as a brand, that's because it's a portmanteau of some other actual scotch brands: Macallan and one of the many scotches that start with "Glen" (Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glenmorangie, Glengoyne -- there are a lot of glens in Scotland, all right?)